Is there a basketball tournament going on?

I guess it's like Kansas or Duke in the finals or something? I honestly hadn't noticed. I'm just glad that Georgia State Basketball is no longer interrupting my indie college rock on Album 88 anymore. I got to post basketball stuff though, so here's the first of 4 posts featuring the contents of that 20 card vintage hoops grab bag I bought at the card show a couple of months ago for 4 bucks. I broke it up into four posts because I don't want to upload 40 images all at once.

1972-72 Dennis Awtrey

Red, red card and blue, blue eyes. The eyes would pop out even more had I not screwed up the scan. Awtrey actually had a decent career in the NBA, 12 years performing the "big white guy in the paint" role to perfection. I just like the card for that groovy font for the team name.

Topps used this design for their Basketball Heritage set a few years ago. It's probably the last vintage Topps basketball design we'll see from Topps for a long time, unless they swipe a few for their next Wrestling Heritage set.

197?? ABA Checklist

I can't remember the year and I don't feel like figuring it out right now. Topps had two checklists for the year, separated into NBA and ABA players. This is a well checked checklist.

Notice the poor sap was only missing 10 cards from his ABA set and one was Dr. J. That makes me sad for that poor collector from 20 years ago.

1973-74 Dave DeBusschere

Hall of Famer with over 14 thousand points and a couple of rings. Better known among card geeks as having a1963 Topps rookie card for his time with the White Sox. All the All-Star cards from this set had the action photo with the floating head on the corner.

1973-74 was Dave's last season, and the cartoon points out his new gig as the Nets' new GM. Gotta love the green text on a red background.

1979-80 John Drew

Yeah, a Hawk! Drew was a great scorer for Atlanta and was the guy they traded for Dominique Wilkins. Cards from this set were some of the first I ever had. I pulled them out of a penny box. I thin kI loked them because the basketball with the team name circling it reminded me of Saturn. I was a very geeky little boy.


Now this is how you use red on the back of a card. Black on red, everything's readable except for maybe the card number.

1975-76 Willie Norwood

Now that is a classic face. Rembrandt would have loved to paint that face. That face isn't even ruined by the goofy airbrushing of Willie's Detroit Pistons Jersey with, um, Pistons colors. Suns colors are blue and orange! The really stange thing is that Willie didn't play a single game with the Suns, he was with the Sonics (R.I.P) in '75-76. I have an urge to find a green Sharpie and correct this travesty.

This is one of my favorite basketball sets. The design is nice and simple, there's lots of interesting photos in the sets and it's a fairly large set packed with ABA players if I remember correctly. The back is fairly unique too with the big circle o' bio information.

I hope you enjoyed that because I have 15 more cards to show odd before the Championship game. Hooray for old basketball cards!